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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Elite Regular 15-point Bonus Attempt - Part Two

I spent time yesterday and today working on the challenges of the course I posted a couple of days ago.

The turn from #4 to #5 remains the toughest part of the course for us. Belle comes shooting out of the tunnel on her left lead and 80% of the time, I am unable to get her to turn right going over #4.

As long as Belle has momentum going away from me in the weaves, I can be pretty sure she will take the #11 jump and then take the #12 jump if I front cross at #9 and stay to the left of the weaves. This was by far the easiest of the challenges for us (once I figured out how to handle it :-).

The final portion of the course turned out very difficult for us. First it wasn't that easy for me to get Belle to turn off the line of jumps and take the tunnel under the A-frame. What seemed to work best was to move with her toward #15 and then move right to the other side of the A-frame. This produced a large enough motion for her to see (if I did it in a timely manner), plus I was in position to send her to the jump after the tunnel.

(I originally did have the tunnel under the A-frame pointing at #11. Placing the exit correctly takes the off-course #11 out of the picture.) However, Belle comes out of the tunnel looking for direction. I will have to lower my A-frame to five feet and see if that will make me more visible to her. Also, I have to wait until she is out of the tunnel before I start moving forward so that she can see my movement toward #17.

I originally thought getting Belle to turn left over #17 would be difficult, but if she took the jump after the tunnel, there was no problem in that regard.